Downloads and Support

Prim Composer 1.0 Beta 2

I’m happy to announce that Prim Composer for 3ds Max has been officially released and is now available for download.

Prim Composer is a complete offline builder for Second Life and OpenSim. Create regular prims and sculpts within 3ds Max and import them into either Second Life or OpenSim as linked sets. Hierarchical grouping and gizmo scaling are supported within 3ds Max.

1.0 Beta 1 was released on June 28th and Beta 2 was released a week later on July 4th. If you got Beta 1, the only changes in Beta 2 are to the Maxport importer. Additional diagnostics and safety checks were added to test for common problems such as no-build parcels, full parcels, and insufficient funds for uploading textures.

SculptGenMax is now a part of Prim Composer

Prim Composer includes the latest build of SculptGenMax which is accessible from a new top-level menu in 3ds Max. SculptGenMax will continue to be developed but it will no longer be downloadable as a separate standalone product.

Current users of SculptGenMax are encouraged to upgrade to Prim Composer as soon as possible to ensure maximum compatibility between .max files and future versions. SculptGenMax works exactly the same within Prim Composer as it did before, so you don’t need to learn anything new to get started.

Getting Started

Installing Prim Composer is straightforward, but existing SculptGenMax users will need to delete the previously installed SculptGenMax files first. See the Installation Instructions for more information.

A Guide for Prim Composer is also provided. Read this to get an overview of how it works.

If you have problems, feel free to post in the Prim Composer Support Forums.

Future

Development of Prim Composer is ongoing with many new features planned such as texturing and better integration with your Second Life inventory. Video tutorials are also coming soon.

1.0 RC4 - Improved Usability, New Installation Procedure

ScultGenMax Homepage

WHAT’S NEW

• New Feature: Improved Usability - save your settings! SculptGenMax remembers your choices!
• Enhancement: Source code has been completely reorganized to support Prim Composer. Requires a new installation procedure.

Save Your Settings

Save Settings!

RC4 brings greatly improved usability. You don’t want to use “proportional” because it reduces sculptmap detail? No problem. Uncheck “proportional” and save your settings. You’ll never have to worry about it again! RC4 will remember your preferences and restore them the next time you run 3ds Max.

Here’s a quick list of the usability changes in RC4:

• Save your settings! New “Settings” menu allows you to save your settings between different 3ds Max sessions.
• SculptGenMax also remembers your settings if you close the dialog and re-open it within the same 3ds Max session.
• Improved visual clues. The X, Y, and Z fields under proportional are now blanked whenever a sculptmap is loaded from a file or the dialog settings are changed. This provides a visual clue that the bitmap being displayed was not generated with the dialog’s current settings.
• Imported objects are named after the sculptmap. So, if you load a sculptmap named “banana.bmp”, the imported object will be given a name such as “banana.bmp01″. This helps you keep track of the sculptmap that was used to create a particular object.

New Installation Procedure

Copy primcomposer directory to stdscripts

The source code for RC4 has been reorganized to better support the upcoming product: Prim Composer (see next heading). While this doesn’t change the way SculptGenMax works, it does require a small change in the installation procedure.

Previous versions of SculptGenMax were packaged as a single .ms maxscript file that you simply had to execute. RC4 is packaged as several files, some of which have to be copied into place before you start 3ds Max. An installer is planned, but not yet available. Until then, we will have to install SculptGenMax manually using the following procedure:

• Quit 3ds Max if it is running.
• Copy the “primcomposer” directory that comes with SculptGenMax into 3DSMAX_HOME/stdplugs/stdscripts/ (where 3DSMAX_HOME is the directory in which 3ds Max is installed). If this is done correctly, then there will be a directory stdscripts/primcomposer/ that will contain several files such as sculptie-mapgen.ms and sculptie-import.ms
• restart 3ds Max
• in 3ds Max, MAXScript>Run Script…, and select SculptGenMax.ms in the file dialog and press “Open”.
• if this is your first time installing ScultGenMax, you will also need to create a custom button. Refer to the installation instructions for more info.

Basically, the installation is the same as before, except that you now have to copy the primcomposer directory to stdscripts. Post a message in the support forums if you have problems.

Prim Composer is Coming!

Source Code Reorganized

As mentioned, the source code for RC4 has also been completely reorganized so that it can be used in conjunction with the upcoming release of Prim Composer. Many of you have been anxiously awaiting Prim Composer, but in case this is new, here’s a brief explanation.

Prim Composer takes building to the next level in 3ds Max. It is a complete offline building environment that supports both sculpties and conventional prims.

• Create sculpties in 3ds Max.
• Create traditional prims in 3ds Max such as boxes and spheres using the standard SL parameters such as cut and hollow.
• Select a group of sculpties and prims within a 3ds Max scene and scale them as a group using the mouse. Scaling works automatically to limit the size of any prim in the selection so that no prim gets too large or small to be a valid prim in SL.
• Export the 3ds Max scene of sculpties and prims to disk and import them automatically into Second Life as a single object. Size, location, and rotation of prims is automatically preserved so that the resulting set of prims in Second Life looks exactly the same as in 3ds Max.

Well, that’s the goal, at least. The first version will require some manual intervention such as creating and pasting notecards and uploading images. But the plan is for all of this to be automated as much as possible using things like libsecondlife or perhaps a modified client. And the first version will not support texturing. You will still have to manually texture the prims in SL once they’ve been uploaded.

But it is still a huge leap forward for SL building in 3ds Max. And it’s coming very soon now! The changes in SculptGenMax 1.0rc4 make it possible for Prim Composer to delegate to SculptGenMax for common tasks such as importing objects and generating sculptmaps.

Stay tuned!